1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for sequentially displaying information recorded on an interactive information recording medium, and more particularly, to a method for sequentially and automatically displaying, for the predetermined or whole time, picture play items and segment information defined with respect to the picture play items on an interactive information recording media on which aural information and image information are recorded including characters, graphics, musics etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the area of optical discs, compact discs are widely used as information recording media in which a large quantity of audio information is recorded. In information recording media in the form of a disc, an audio compact disc (hereinafter referred to as "CD") has been developed firstly. A compact disc graphics (hereinafter referred to as "CDG") on which graphic information and audio information are recorded has been developed, and a video CD on which motion image information and audio information are recorded is nowadays common used to break the image monotony which is caused by the CDG wherein the still images are recorded.
The video CD is an optical disc where the aural/motion information are so compressed in suitable information content by a moving picture experts group (MPEG) algorithm and recorded thereon in large quantity and reproduced by the MPEG algorithm that a large amount of aural/motion information are recorded/reproduced. The video CD is an information recording medium which can be used for aural/motion information recording/reproducing which requires a large quantity of recording area.
In addition, there has been proposed an interactive information recording medium such as the so-called CD-interactive (CD-I) by which the user can perform the reproducing operation with respect to the characters, graphics, music etc. recorded thereon by an interactive manner. Further, an interactive video CD (video CD V2.0) has been proposed by which the user can selectively reproduce a specific information of the interactive information recording medium in an interactive manner on the basis of the MPEG algorithm which is applied to the recording/reproducing of the video CD.
The interactive information recording medium includes a main directory, and at least one sub-directory derived from the main directory for indicating the whole menu of contents which are recorded on the corresponding information recording medium. Each of the sub-directories has picture play items for outputting on a display and at least one segment item which is defined in the picture play items. Thus, when the user sequentially designates from the main directory to the sub-directory related to at least one segment item, the display related thereto is shown so that the user may obtain from the interactive information recording medium. U.S. Pat. No. 5,359,472 describes an embodiment of a method and an apparatus for sequentially displaying information recorded on an interactive information medium as above.
However, since the interactive information recording medium is composed of at least one directory and segment item, when the user intends to reproduce the necessary information in the directory and in the sub-directory related to the segment items, the user has to select a button of a key input section a plurality of times between the directory and picture play items or the segment items. Further, it is inconvenient to confirm all the items which are recorded on the interactive information recording medium.